RSS
AP Article Completely Distorts the Connection Between Black Americans and Palestinians
Family members, friends, and supporters of Israelis and other nationalities who were taken hostage on Oct. 7 by Hamas terrorists during a deadly attack march after they began a few days march towards Jerusalem, in Latrun, Israel, Nov. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
A global influence campaign linked to Russia uses spoofed versions of legitimate news websites to misinform the public about the war between Hamas and Israel.
According to a report in Haaretz, this “Doppelgänger campaign” spreads disinformation using “replicas of websites of respected legacy media outlets across the world,” including the French newspapers Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Le Parisien; Der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt and Bild in Germany; the Israeli sites Mako and Liberal in Hebrew; and the English-language Jewish Journal, a prominent Jewish American outlet.
The Dec. 17 Associated Press article, “Black American solidarity with Palestinians is rising and testing longstanding ties to Jewish allies,” left this CAMERA researcher wondering whether the storied AP had also fallen victim to the Doppelgänger campaign.
But a careful examination of the link, along with the fact that the article appears on the Lexis-Nexis news database, confirms that the piece’s provenance is authentically the AP. The piece’s reporting, on the other hand, is as detached as could be from AP’s vaunted journalistic standards. Inverting the Doppelgänger campaign, this real AP story masquerades as fake news.
Indeed, a second CAMERA researcher reacted after reading the piece: “Is this an Op-Ed? Does AP publish Op-Eds? Because it reads like one. A really terrible one.”
Intent on shoehorning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (and the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre) into the struggle of Black Americans against racism, it’s no wonder that AP video journalist Noreen Nasir and race and ethnicity editor Aaron Morrison ignore the shocking video of the final terrifying moments of the life of Joshua Mollel.
Mollel was a Black, Tanzanian agricultural intern who came to Israel in September to study farming. Hamas terrorists brutally murdered him, gleefully capturing the barbaric attack on video, and kidnapped his mutilated body to the Gaza Strip. (Warning: the difficult, very graphic video of Mollel’s murder is available here.)
Mollel was not Hamas’ only Tanzanian victim. Clemence Felix Mtenga, also a cohort in the agricultural internship, was also murdered by Hamas.
The video showing a Black man brutally slaughtered for the crime of studying in Israel fails to conform to the baseless narrative promoted by those who “see the Palestinian struggle in the West Bank and Gaza reflected in their own fight for racial equality and civil rights” — a narrative that the AP writers platform without challenge. Freely editorializing as if they are op-ed as opposed to news writers, Nasir and Morrison continue: “The recent rise of protest movements against police brutality in the U.S., where structural racism plagues nearly every facet of life, has connected Black and Palestinian activists under a common cause.”
But what common cause does Palestinian brutality, which did not spare the life of even non-Israeli Africans, have with Black Americans’ fight for racial equality and civil rights?
Indeed, the insistence on molding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into the image of the American civil rights movement is a known ploy of anti-Israel activism, falsely casting Israelis as white oppressors.
As Einat Wilf wrote in Sapir Journal in 2021 (“How Not to Think About the Conflict“):
And so, in an act of blatant neocolonialism, the American story is viewed as the universal prism through which all societies should be understood and analyzed. Blithely ignorant of the specificity of their own experience, the neocolonialists fit the square peg of the conflict into the round hole of American history. Jews are bizarrely cast as “white,” and Zionism as a movement of “white supremacy,” while Arabs, who look exactly like Jews (Fauda, anyone?), are cast as “people of color.” The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is cast as a mirror of race relations in America, but without the relevant local context of slavery, Jim Crow, or any of the specificities of Jewish, Arab, or Middle Eastern history.
The AP writers depict the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the Middle Eastern version of the American civil rights movement through the eyes of Cydney Wallace. The AP reports that the Black Jewish activist recently returned from a West Bank trip that reinforced her view that Palestinians are fighting the same civil rights battle as Black Americans. “Back home in Chicago, Wallace has navigated speaking about her support for Palestinians while maintaining her Jewish identity and standing against antisemitism. She says she doesn’t see those things as mutually exclusive,” recount Nasir and Morrison.
The AP gives no indication that Cydney Wallace’s Jewish identity is anything but mainstream. In fact, she is very much on the fringes of the widest definition of what constitutes Jewish community.
Wallace is a member of Beth Shalom B’Nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation, which serves the Black Israelite community and does not represent the mainstream Jewish community including Black Jews who adhere to American Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform Judaism. While Judaism recognizes as Jewish those born within the Jewish community, or converted to Judaism under the auspices of recognized rabbinic authorities, the Black Israelite community is based on self-identification.
An in-depth Anti-Defamation League backgrounder on the very diverse Black Hebrew Israelites community explains: “The Black Hebrew Israelite (BHI) movement is a fringe religious movement that rejects widely accepted definitions of Judaism and asserts that people of color are the true children of Israel.”
Nevertheless, the AP simply ignores Wallace’s noteworthy affiliation, falsely casting her religious identity as mainstream Judaism.
Exploiting Wallace’s “Jewish identity” without disclosing the atypical nature of that identity, the lengthy article ostensibly explores the dynamics between antisemitism, the Black experience in America, and the supposed intersectionality with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In doing so, the AP writers entirely ignore antisemitism within the Palestinian population. Indeed, a 2014 global survey carried out by the Anti-Defamation League found that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are among the world’s top antisemitic “hot spots,” with 93 percent of the population harboring antisemitic views.
Sky-high Palestinian antisemitism, just like Hamas’ brutal murder of Tanzanians, belie the tale of Palestinians as the Middle Eastern equivalent of oppressed Black Americans. The same dynamic is at play as the journalists blandly downplay Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities as “the unprecedented Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas militants.”
In exactly what way was the Hamas attacks were unprecedented — was it the “historic win for the Palestinian resistance,” as anti-Israel campus groups put it, or the sheer number of civilian victims; the deliberate targeting of children, women, and elderly; the widespread rape, torture, mutilation, beheadings, burning alive, murder of children in front of parents and vice versa; the kidnapping of hundreds of Israelis and foreigners, including children and even a nine-month-old baby?
Nasir and Morr don’t say. By contrast, regarding “Israel’s ensuing bombardment of the Gaza Strip,” the duo suddenly locate “shocking images of destruction and death.” It is as if, through the authors’ eyes, there were no shocking images of destruction and death from Hamas’ attacks on Israel.
Indeed, Nasir and Morrison simply can’t shake the compulsion to withhold adjectives when it comes to the Hamas atrocities, even as they extend adjectives highlighting the severity of Israel’s response. In this vein, they persist: “None of the members of [Wallace’s] ‘Black Jerusalem’ trip anticipated it would come to a tragic end with the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 taken hostage. Since then, more than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s blistering air and ground campaign in Gaza, now in its third month.” [Emphasis added.]
The pattern downplaying Palestinian violence manifests again with respect to the hostages and Palestinian prisoners released in prisoner exchanges. The AP reports:
During a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas as part of the recent deal to free dozens of hostages seized by Hamas militants, Israel released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Many were teenagers who had recently been picked up in the West Bank for minor offenses like stone-throwing and had not been charged.
Strikingly, the reporters take care to note that many of the released Palestinian prisoners were teenagers held for “minor offenses” and were not charged. (Unmentioned are the released Palestinian prisoners convicted of attempted murder, and others charged with stabbings. In addition, the “minor” offense of stone-throwing has been known to kill and seriously injure.)
In contrast, the partisan pair provide zero details about any of the 105 released hostages of all ages — from toddlers to octagarians — whose only crime was to be Israeli (whether Jewish or Arab) or associating with Israelis (as in the case of the Tanzanian students, along with dozens of Thai and Nepali workers). Almost all of the Israeli hostages released so far have been elderly women, mothers, and children. They are guilty of no offenses and “had not been charged.”
Silence on Black Antisemitism
Palestinian antisemitism is not the only anti-Jewish bigotry which gets a pass. “The 39-year-old said she had plenty to focus on at home, where she frequently gives talks on addressing anti-Black sentiment in the American Jewish community and dismantling white supremacy in the U.S.,” the AP duo report about Wallace.
But they gloss over existing anti-Jewish sentiment in certain pockets within the Black community, including within elements of the Black Hebrew Israel movement, while expanding on Black support for Palestinians:
From Black American groups that denounced the U.S. backing of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory to Black protesters demonstrating for the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, some Jewish Americans are concerned that support could escalate the threat of antisemitism and weaken Jewish-Black ties fortified during the Civil Rights Movement.
The journalists also under-report the grotesque antisemitism embedded in Black Lives Matter movement, stating:
In 2016, when BLM activists formed the coalition known as the Movement for Black Lives, they included support for Palestinians in a platform called the “Vision for Black Lives.” A handful of Jewish groups, which had largely been supportive of the BLM movement, denounced the Black activists’ characterization of Israel as a purportedly “apartheid state” that engages in “discrimination against the Palestinian people.”
But the Movement for Black Lives did not stop at false apartheid charges; it also accused Israel of genocide, which, according to the widely-accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition, constitutes antisemism. As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander previously reported: “One section, headlined ‘Invest-Divest,’ accused the US, through its alignment with Israel, of complicity in what the authors called the ‘genocide that is taking place against the Palestinian people’ and Israeli ‘apartheid.’”
Other BLM manifestations of antisemitism include at least one documented riot organized by a BLM leader in Los Angeles targeting a historic Jewish neighborhood.
And, as our colleagues at CAMERA UK have noted, “BLM groups in Los Angeles, Chicago and DC issued statements . . . literally supporting Hamas’s barbarism. BLM Chicago tweeted an image of a Hamas paraglider with a Palestinian flag attached to his parachute and the caption ‘I stand with Palestine’ before evidentially deleting the tweet following criticism.”
The far left are showing their true colors. Here Black Lives Matter Chicago are celebrating the butchers who arrived on paragliders at a music festival and brutalized and murdered hundreds of defenseless young people at a music festival. Difficult to comprehend. pic.twitter.com/lduVCnzgdj
— Eoghan McCabe (@eoghan) October 10, 2023
Critically, some Black Hebrew Israelites completely reject Wallace’s notion that the Palestinian experience is analogous to the Black American experience, and argue that Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre underscores the commonalities between the Jewish and Black stories. But AP, which boasts that it seeks to “expand the reach of factual reporting,” silenced voices and facts which contradict its predetermined narrative.
A message from this Hebrew Israelite to the Black and LGBTQ communities. #MustWatch pic.twitter.com/dl0gJ1BfK8
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) December 18, 2023
The AP’s effort to pass off the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as the Middle Eastern doppelgänger of the civil rights movement, with the Palestinians playing the part of Black Americans battling against racism, is nothing short of a parody of journalism. In short, it’s a real news outlet playing at fake news.
With research by Adam Levick.
Tamar Sternthal is the director of CAMERA’s Israel Office. A version of this article previously appeared on the CAMERA website. See also “Black Lives Matter, JVP’s Deadly Exchange, and Israel” and “The BLM Movement and Antisemitism“
The post AP Article Completely Distorts the Connection Between Black Americans and Palestinians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
UK Police Arrest Two Men for Spraying Jewish People With Water in Viral Online Video

Two men sprayed water guns at Jewish pedestrians in a viral video taken in the UK. Photo: Screenshot
Authorities arrested two men in the United Kingdom on Thursday for squirting specifically Jewish pedestrians with water guns, as seen in a video that has gone viral on social media, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said.
The men, ages 26 and 36, were arrested in Farnworth, Bolton, and remain in custody for questioning on suspicion of racially aggravated common assault, police added. Authorities have also seized a vehicle and water pistol suspected to have been used in the incident.
“We are treating this incident with the utmost seriousness and have acted swiftly to make arrests,” said Chief Inspector Simon Ashcroft, of GMP’s Salford district. He noted that GMP has a “zero-tolerance approach to hate crime in any form,” and police are “committed to ensuring our communities feel safe and supported.”
“We continue to work closely with our partners to provide reassurance and encourage anyone affected to come forward,” he added. “We are also aware from other footage that there may be further victims, and we urge anyone who believes they have been targeted to contact GMP or the Community Security Trust (CST).” Police encourage anyone with information about the incident to contact authorities or file a report online.
The viral video – which was shared earlier this month on social media and has since been deleted — showed two men in a vehicle in Greater Manchester laughing and smiling as they sprayed water at Orthodox Jewish pedestrians, including children. The two men targeted Jewish people as the traditional Jewish song “Hava Nagila” played in the background.
The video was posted on social media by a Polish rap group called KONSP1RA, whose members include a YouTuber and UK resident named Kamil Galanty and his friend Mati. Both men are featured in the water gun prank video. KONSP1RA has posted similar water prank videos on social media, but the most recent was the first to specifically target only Jewish people. However, the group has targeted Jews in other prank videos, including one filmed in an airport and another in a supermarket.
CST, the UK’s Jewish security organization, condemned the “appalling antisemitic video” on Wednesday. The British charity Campaign Against Antisemitism said the pranksters behaved “like playground bullies” by harassing Jewish people and added that the incident “is not a prank but antisemitic abuse, and doing so from the comfort of your car is particularly cowardly.”
In response to backlash over the clip, KONSP1RA insisted in a statement on social media that they are not antisemitic. They claimed they “respect all races, all religions, and all people.”
“We strongly reject any form of hate, racism, or discrimination,” they wrote. “Our channel is based entirely on humor, entertainment, and light-hearted pranks. Our goal is to make people laugh – never to hurt or offend … If anyone interpreted our video in a harmful or offensive way – we are truly sorry. That was never our intention.”
KONSP1RA said they are being “wrongfully attacked” and labeled antisemitic — “something that does not represent us or our content in any way.” They said accusations made against the group are “extremely hurtful and unfair.”
“Let’s not spread hate where there was never any intention of it,” they stated in conclusion. “Peace and respect to all.”

Photo: Facebook
This week’s arrests came one day after CST published a new report detailing antisemitic incidents recorded during the first half of this year. CST recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents in the UK from January to June, marking the second-highest total of incidents ever recorded by the nonprofit security group in the first six months of any year.
This year’s total was only surpassed by the first half of 2024, in which 2,019 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel.
RSS
Azerbaijan and Armenia to Sign Peace Deal, White House Says

Residents in vehicles attempt to leave the city of Stepanakert following a military operation conducted by Azerbaijani armed forces in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region inhabited by ethnic Armenians, Sept. 24, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/David Ghahramanyan
Azerbaijan and Armenia will sign an initial US-brokered peace agreement during a meeting with US President Donald Trump on Friday, a deal aimed at boosting economic ties between the two countries after decades of conflict, the White House said.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told reporters that Trump would sign separate deals with both Armenia and Azerbaijan on energy, technology, economic cooperation, border security, infrastructure, and trade. No further details were provided.
Trump will meet separately with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the White House, beginning at 2:30 pm (1830 GMT), with a trilateral meeting set for 4:15 pm (2015 GMT), the White House said.
The agreement includes exclusive US development rights to a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus, dubbed the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”
US officials said the agreement was hammered out during repeated visits to the region and would provide a basis for working toward a full normalization between the countries.
Neither the joint declaration due to be signed nor the separate bilateral agreements with the US were released.
It was not immediately clear how the deal being signed on Friday would address thorny issues such as the demarcation of shared borders and Baku’s demand for a change in Yerevan’s constitution, which includes a reference to a 1989 call for the reunification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, then an autonomous region within Soviet Azerbaijan.
Officials briefing reporters skirted over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh – a mountainous Azerbaijani region that had a mostly ethnic Armenian population – broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.
Both Armenia and Azerbaijan won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Azerbaijan took back full control of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 in a military offensive, prompting almost all of the territory’s remaining 100,000 Armenians to flee to Armenia.
US officials highlighted the opportunities presented for both countries and US investors through creation of the new transit corridor, which will allow greater exports of energy and other resources.
“What’s going to happen here with the Trump route is, this isn’t charity. This is a highly investable entity,” said one senior administration official, adding that at least nine companies had in recent days expressed interest in operating the transit corridor, including three US firms.
‘SAFER AND MORE PROSPEROUS’
Under a carefully negotiated section of the documents the leaders will sign on Friday, Armenia plans to award the US exclusive special development rights for an extended period on a transit corridor that will be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, and known by the acronym TRIPP, the officials told Reuters this week.
Trump would sign a directive to set up a negotiating team to work out details for how to operate the corridor, with initial commercial negotiations to begin next week, one of the officials said.
“The losers here are China, Russia, and Iran. The winners here are the West,” one of the officials said. “Both countries that have been in conflict for 35 years … are looking and talking about full peace with each other tomorrow.”
“It’s being done, not through force, but through commercial partnership … with these two countries,” the official said. “The joint declaration that we’re going to see signed today is the first-ever peace declaration signed bilaterally by the two countries since the end of the Cold War.”
Trump has tried to present himself as a global peacemaker in the first months of his second term. The White House credits him with brokering a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand and sealing peace deals between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Pakistan and India. He also is intensifying efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, eyeing a possible meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin as early as next week.
Senior administration officials told reporters the agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan marked the first end to several frozen conflicts on Russia’s periphery since the end of the Cold War and said it would send a powerful signal to the entire region.
“This isn’t just about Armenia. It’s not just about Azerbaijan. It’s about the entire region, and they know that that region is going to be safer and more prosperous with President Trump,” a senior administration official said.
A peace deal could transform the South Caucasus, an energy-producing region neighboring Russia, Europe, Turkey, and Iran that is crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines but riven by closed borders and longstanding ethnic conflicts.
RSS
US and UK Differ on Gaza but Share Goal to End Crisis, Vance Says

US Vice President JD Vance meets British Foreign Secretary David Lammy at Chevening House in Sevenoaks, Britain, Aug. 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/Pool
Britain and the United States may disagree about how to address the crisis in Gaza, but they share a common goal in resolving it, Vice President JD Vance said as he met British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Friday in southern England.
Vance, who has previously criticized Britain and its governing Labour Party, landed with his wife Usha and their three children in London before heading to Chevening, the large country residence used by the British foreign minister in Kent.
The visit comes amid increased attention on Vance‘s foreign policy views as he emerges as a key figure in President Donald Trump’s administration and his possible pick as successor.
Asked about Britain’s plan to recognize a Palestinian state, Vance said the US and Britain had a common objective to resolve the crisis in the Middle East, adding: “We may have some disagreements about how exactly to accomplish that goal, and we’ll talk about that today.”
Vance reiterated that the US had no plans to recognise a Palestinian state, saying he did not know what recognition actually meant, “given the lack of a functional government there.”
Britain, by contrast, has taken a harder stance against Israel, declaring its intention to recognize a Palestinian state along with France and Canada to put pressure on Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu over the continuing conflict and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Close to Chevening House, a small group of protesters had gathered, some waving Palestinian flags and one holding up a sign showing a meme of Vance. Other protests are also planned during the visit.
Asked by a reporter about Trump’s suggestion this week that Vance was his likely heir apparent for the 2028 presidential election, the vice president said his current focus was to do a “good job” for Americans.
“I’m not really focused even on the election in 2026, much less one, two years after that,” he said, referring to the midterm election next year.
FISHING TRIP
Earlier on Friday, Vance and Lammy went fishing in the lake behind Chevening House, appearing relaxed in blue button-down shirts and sharing a laugh.
Vance joked to reporters that the “one strain on the special relationship” between Britain and the US was that all his children had caught fish but that the British foreign minister had not.
“Before beginning our bilateral, the Vice President gave me fishing tips, Kentucky style,” Lammy said in a post on X.
The pair have developed a warm friendship, bonding over their difficult childhoods and shared Christian faith, according to two officials familiar with the relationship.
“I have to say that I really have become a good friend, and David has become a good friend of mine,” Vance told reporters, sitting beside Lammy.
After spending two nights in Chevening with Lammy, the Vances will travel to the Cotswolds, a picturesque area that is a popular retreat for wealthy and influential figures, from footballers and film stars to media and political figures.
Vance has championed an America First foreign policy and once said last year’s election victory for Lammy’s center-left Labour Party meant Britain was “maybe” the first “truly Islamist” country with a nuclear weapon.
Lammy once called Trump a “far-right extremist” and a “neo-Nazi” but since coming to power has brushed off his remarks as “old news.”
Vance‘s trip will include several official engagements, meetings, and visits to cultural sites and a likely meeting with US troops, a source familiar with the planning said.
Trump, who traveled to Scotland for a private visit, is also scheduled for a historic second state visit to Britain next month.